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W-B native took a stand against poor treatment of Jackie Robinson

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On the cool rainy afternoon of Sunday, May 25, 1947, the Brooklyn Dodgers were hosting the Philadelphia Phillies at Ebbets Field. There was bad blood between the two teams. It all began a month earlier when the Phillies and their manager, Ben Chapman, a native of Alabama, played a three-game series at Brooklyn.

Chapman led his players in a barrage of racial epithets against Dodger rookie Jackie Robinson, the first African American to break Major League Baseball's color barrier.

Sworn to a "no-striking back" ban by Dodger President Branch Rickey, Robinson was compelled to take the abuse. But on this chilly afternoon, he would get his revenge.

In the fourth inning, with the Dodgers down 2-0 and Pee Wee Reese on first, Robinson lashed a single to right center off Phillies' starter Dick Mauney. Moments later, Reese and Robinson raced home when Pete Reiser smashed a double off the left-field wall.

Two innings later, with Reese again on first and Tommy Hughes pitching for the Phils, Robinson lined a fastball to left. Reese later scored when Hughes balked him home from third.

The Dodgers enjoyed a 4-3 lead when Robinson came to the plate again in the eighth inning. Having worked the count to three balls and one strike, Jackie launched Hughes' next pitch into the lower leftfield deck.

It was Robinson's second Major League home run, the first he hit at Ebbets Field, and it secured the Dodgers' 5-3 win over the Phillies.

Jackie Robinson's 1947 quest to break baseball's color barrier was tarnished by the race-baiting of several National League teams. But none treated Robinson as poorly as the Philadelphia Phillies.

At the same time, the boorish behavior was limited to Phils' manager Ben Chapman and primarily those players who hailed from the south. Of the 25 players on the Phillies' roster, 10 came from the Deep South where Jim Crow still reigned. Zealous segregationists, they were fiercely opposed to integrating baseball and expressed their displeasure at every turn.

However, there were those Phillies who'd been raised in the north and disapproved of the discriminatory treatment. One of those players was Tommy Hughes, a native of Wilkes-Barre, who was the victim of Robinson's hitting prowess on that chilly May afternoon.

Hughes, a once highly-touted pitcher, respected Robinson's right to play in the major leagues, even if the black ballplayer's success came at his own expense.

Born on Oct. 7, 1919, in Wilkes-Barre, Thomas Owens Hughes attended Hanover Township High School. After graduating in 1937, he turned down several college offers to play semi-professional baseball.

Two years later, Hughes signed with the Baltimore Orioles of the Class AA International League, but after a 0-2 win-loss record in seven appearances, he was demoted to the Class D Eastern Shore League. Hughes proved to be unhittable at that level, posting a perfect 9-0 record with a 1.80 earned run average.

Recalled by Baltimore in 1940, Hughes compiled a 14-11 record and a 3.56 ERA in 26 appearances. The performance captured the attention of the Philadelphia Phillies, who purchased his contract for the 1941 season.

Hughes made his major league debut on April 19, 1941 in a 4-1 loss to the New York Giants. Still, the Phillies were impressed enough to keep him in their starting rotation. The 6' 1" right-hander made 34 appearances that season and posted a 9-14 record for a team that lost 111 games. It was the most wins for any Philles pitcher that season.

In 1942, Hughes, just 22 years old, became the ace of the Phillies' pitching staff. He went 12-18 with an impressive 3.06 ERA for the National League cellar-dwellers.

Hughes' major league career was interrupted by three years of military service. Although he was a successful pitcher for several camp teams, the time away from pro ball diminished his pitching. When he returned to the Phillies in 1946, he posted a 6-9 win-loss record and a 4.38 ERA in 29 appearances.

Hoping that Hughes would regain his winning form, the Phillies slotted him into their starting rotation at the beginning of the 1947 season. When the team traveled to Brooklyn for a three-game series April 22-24, Hughes was tapped to start the third and final game.

During the first game, on April 22, the Phillies initiated a verbal assault on Robinson, the likes of which had seldom, if ever, been heard. When Robinson walked to the plate in the bottom of the first inning, Phillies' manager Ben Chapman, standing on the top step of the dugout shouted: "It's time to head back to the jungle!"

The Dodgers sat on their hands in the dugout pretending they hadn't heard the epithet. When Robinson jogged back to the bench after grounding out, his teammates wouldn't even look at him. They had been forced into Branch Rickey's noble experiment to integrate baseball, and they begrudgingly accepted their fate. As the game unfolded, many Phillies players joined Chapman in the race-baiting, hurling the N-word and other insults.

Bench Jockeying was a tradition in baseball, and no topic was sacred. Personal problems, appearance, ethnicity and race were all considered "fair game." But the Phillies' verbal abuse of Robinson exceeded even baseball's broadly defined sense of propriety. They even tried to provoke his Dodger teammates by listing the repulsive "sores and diseases they would get if they touched the towels or combs" used by Robinson.

Initially, Jackie was stunned by the abuse. But the longer it continued, he became enraged, like a time bomb waiting to explode. Years later, Robinson, in his autobiography, confessed that for "one wild and rage-crazed minute I wanted to stride over to the Phillies' dugout, grab one of those white sons of bitches and smash his teeth in with my despised black fist." But he realized that if he had given in to those feelings he would have set the course of integration back a decade or more.

Instead, Robinson got some measure of revenge in the eighth inning.

With the two teams deadlocked in a scoreless tie, he singled, stole second, advanced to third on a throwing error by the Phillies catcher, and scored the game's only run on Gene Hermanski's single. The Dodgers won, 1-0.

Brooklyn won again the following day, 5-3, but Robinson went hitless. Throughout the game, the Phillies' bench rode him even worse. But the Dodger rookie took it in silence. Again, Robinson's teammates ignored the racial abuse and said nothing to ease his burden.

Hughes took the mound for the third and final game of the series on April 24. He started the bottom of the first inning by walking Dodger second baseman Eddie Stanky. Robinson came to bat next, and the Phillies started in again, calling him, "[N-word] trash!"

Stanky had heard enough.

"You [epithet] cowards! Why don't you pick on someone who can defend himself," he screamed back.

Ironically, Stanky was one of the Dodgers who signed a petition to kick Jackie off the team earlier that spring. Now, the Phillies' appalling behavior was beginning to rally the Dodgers behind their black teammate.

Chapman turned his wrath on Stanky, calling him a: "[N-word] lover!" Then he called time, walked out to the pitcher's mound, and reminded Hughes of the standing order he issued to all the Phillies' pitchers before the series began: whenever any pitcher had two strikes and no balls on Robinson he had to knock him down or pay a $50 fine.

After Chapman returned to the dugout, Hughes promptly delivered a first pitch fastball off the plate for ball one, thereby eliminating the need to throw at the Dodger rookie or pay a stiff fine.

Robinson hit the next pitch down the right field line to get on base and advance Stanky to second. Reiser followed with a single to left center field chasing Stanky to third and Robinson to second. Dixie Walker, another petitioner who hailed from Alabama, then hit a two-run single, scoring both Stanky and Robinson before Hughes settled down and retired the side.

After Walker drove in the two runs, he turned to Chapman and chastised him for his inappropriate behavior. Once that happened, all the Dodgers fell in line and began to defend Robinson.

Hughes pitched shut-out ball, surrendering just two more hits before being relieved in the eighth inning. But the Phillies bats fell silent and the Dodgers won the game, 2-0.

It was a turning point for Robinson. Inadvertently, Chapman had rallied the Dodgers around their black teammate. They now admired Jackie for his tremendous restraint in the face of discrimination.

Hughes's refusal to honor his manager's directive was not acknowledged until 2000 when Phillies' pitcher Ken Raffensberger explained that "Tommy refused to throw at Robinson.

"He respected Jackie," said Raffensberger. "Tommy didn't like what Chapman was doing and he wasn't going to participate in it. So he made sure to start him off with a ball. There were a few pitchers on our team, including myself that did the same thing when Jackie came up to the plate. We just felt that it wasn't right.

Jackie Robinson and Tommy Hughes faced each other a few more times that season. But their careers went in opposite directions. Robinson finished the 1947 campaign with a .297 batting average, 12 home runs and 48 RBIs - a performance that earned him the National League's Rookie of the Year Award - and went on to a stellar career that ended with a Hall of Fame induction.

Hughes, on the other hand, completed the season with a 4-11 win-loss record and was traded to the Cincinnati Reds. In his only season with the Reds (and last in the major leagues) Hughes was 0-4 in 12 games with an inflated ERA of 9.00.

Known in Phillies' history as a "hard-luck pitcher," Hughes toiled for teams that never won more than 65 games in any of his five seasons in the Majors. Thus, he only won 31 games, while losing 56. But he did record a very respectable career earned run average of 3.92 and 221 strikeouts.

After retiring from baseball, Hughes returned to Wilkes-Barre, where he served as director of baseball for the city park department. Three years later, he was hired as a coach by the Wilkes-Barre Barons of the Eastern League.

Although he did not realize his full potential as a Major League pitcher, Tommy Hughes showed a lot of character by refusing to reduce himself to the bigotry of his manager and many of his Phillies' teammates. He passed away on Nov. 28, 1990, at the age of 71.

William Kashatus teaches history at Luzerne County Community College. Email him at Bkashatus@luzerne.edu.

William Kashatus, "Jackie & Campy: The Untold Story of Their Rocky Relationship and the Breaking of Baseball's Color Line" (2014)

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